Immigration debate, Monsanto seed, war costs

What in the world are the people in our government thinking? They want to give a break to 11 million illegal immigrants.

They want to give them access to health care, housing, education and food. Now they want to make them citizens?

We created a huge, multi-billion-dollar homeland security department, and who in their right mind believes that we are more secure with 11 million people in this country who are here illegally?

At the same time, lawmakers are hammering senior citizens with higher costs for health care and medicines. Some seniors are struggling to pay for medical treatments while Congress gives away billions to foreign countries and lawmakers have their own separate health insurance. We need to take care of the people who built this country first. Our senior citizens are being neglected by the very government that is supposed to protect them.

Darla Halterman

Norborne, Mo.

Our nation has an important opportunity to streamline and modernize our immigration system through a bipartisan plan being considered in the U.S. Senate.

The bill would reform our outdated immigration system with changes that have been needed for quite some time. The plan would take important steps to modernize our nation’s immigration system.

Educated, skilled workers are needed in many industries throughout the U.S. Businesses, universities, governments and nonprofits should be able to compete for the best and brightest to live, work and contribute their ideas here.

Especially for industries in areas such as high-tech, medical and research, losing these best and brightest costs us opportunities for advancement and new technologies developed from their innovative ideas.

Adaptability is the key to succeeding in an international marketplace. Just as our economy has adjusted to the many improvements in technology, so our immigration system should adjust to the changing environment. The time has come for rational debate, reasonable action and realistic solutions.

For these reasons, I support the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill.

Jordan Williams

Overland ParkMonsanto seed

Monsanto is a large corporation that is monopolizing the agriculture industry, in particular the seeds farmers are using (6-13, Editorial, “America can’t ignore GMO crop trade risks”).

The seeds that are being sold are genetically modified and have a strong correlation to problems in our environment and could harm humans.

The honey bee is what these genetically modified organisms could be affecting the most because of an intestinal disease that is responsible for the rapid decline in the bee population. The disease killing the honey bee has similarities to colon cancer in humans.

With the effects the genetically modified organisms are having on our surrounding world, only time will tell what will happen to us.

A dismantling of Monsanto may be the best way to protect humans.

Brett Delich

ShawneeException of war

Have you noticed that the austerity scolds never tell us that we can’t afford another war?

Seniors, poor people, education, infrastructure and wage earners are supposed to dutifully sacrifice while our government pours money into the Pentagon — even spending billions for weapons the military insists that it does not want.

Although the scolds constantly warn of disaster because of excess spending, they campaign for yet another wildly expensive Middle East military intervention. Never mind that the totally unnecessary Iraq war is estimated to have cost more than $4 trillion and has, in effect, delivered that country to Iran.

Catherine Bowser

Overland ParkGoldberg column

Jonah Goldberg, in his June 16 column, “All we are saying is give libertarianism a chance,” lauds libertarianism while again bashing liberals. He brands those of his ilk as freedom lovers and those on the opposite end of the political spectrum as enslavers and murderers.

Throughout his contrived column he points out only the extreme examples of the hard left and big government and extols the virtues of laissez-faire government.

So let’s withdraw government oversight and return to the lawless days of the Wild West when corporations and individuals were able to run amok,

children were forced to work in sweat shops and corporations waddled knee-deep in profits reaped from unsafe products and unsafe working conditions.

Like many right wingers, he fears that we are heading toward fascism, communism or socialism. Instead, we have evolved into a society where 1 percent of our very wealthy have assets equal to the bottom 50 percent of our citizens.

Is it not possible that we are actually headed for a fascist corporate state in which a few very wealthy “haves” control everyone else?

Bob Stuber, M.D.

St. JosephAbortion, pro-choice

Pro-choice comes with gray areas. As usual, a story of this magnitude is not covered by the mainstream media.

The pro-choice movement is reluctant to have any discussion on how abortions are regulated in fear of harming abortion rights. If you believe in pro-choice, you must also accept the gray areas that come with abortion on demand.

Can we not do anything in these gray areas to save even one of these babies? If we don’t speak out, no matter what side you’re on, these babies will become collateral damage in the gray area of abortion rights.

Why must we pro-life persons be forced to endure again a quasi-Catholic, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, proclaiming the glories of Obamacare? Most of the required facts and procedures she invokes do not jibe with reality.

Above all, she conveniently omits that contrary to what President Barack Obama promised, we will in fact be paying not only for contraceptives but abortions as well. Also, Catholics and any other religious persons who run hospitals will be forced to cover abortion services.

Obama backtracked slightly from that when the Catholic vote mattered, but the backtrack is hardly noticeable. At least in fairness, when you give us Sebelius, can we have some balancing counter-rhetoric, or just a sentence to say no?

James McCormick

Kansas CityLimit concealed guns

I am a gun owner, and I believe in the right to carry concealed firearms, especially if you are legally trained and licensed to conceal-carry and are doing so in a sparsely populated area.

However, I don’t agree with the concept of carrying concealed weapons in businesses like Nebraska Furniture Mart.

I recently read where a police officer who is also a weapons instructor accidentally shot himself in the foot. I can’t imagine a store full of ordinary citizens carrying concealed weapons.

I think it is an insane policy, and I, for one, wouldn’t shop at any store that allows shoppers to carry weapons.

I value my life too much to do so.

Robert Jenkins

Kansas City, Kan.American shame

The immigration issue is in vogue. President Barack Obama wants to increase border security, deport illegal immigrants and make the granting of visas and citizenship easier.

Others want the immigrants to learn English and work hard.

Locally, folks want to close the border to immigrants and generally voice a disdain for “illegals.” Yet these same folks go to restaurants to eat meals prepared by immigrants. They get their roofs repaired by immigrants.

They call immigrants drugs lords, terrorists and murderers.

In reality, these immigrants are honest people fleeing poverty and hunger in Mexico.

They leave their native land for the same reasons European immigrants did years ago. They seek the land of milk and honey, arrive and get treated like crap. What an American shame.